Kari - An Illustrated Adventure

1

The woman was injured, perhaps looking for a safe place to stay, just for a single night. Another stray, isolated from the rest of her race. Perhaps because her hair was not black. A sure sign of mixed blood, and only royalty were allowed to mate with another race.

Stragglers from the main army were common, which was why the patrol would have taken her out as soon as they saw her. But, for whatever reason, they were slacking.

Her leg was dragging behind her, flesh twisted and mauled near the top of her right thigh. It didn't look to be from any animal, perhaps a mace of some sort, but the wound had become infected. Badly. Aghet could smell it from where she knelt behind some brush.

A thought ran through her mind, of going back to the village to retrieve some medicine. Helgit was a gentle soul, and had helped Torbak civilians in the past, but Aghet saw that the woman was unstable. Her eyes were much too wide, the glow nearly gone. The veins in which they manipulated their bodies and spirits were in plain view, which only happened when one was attacking. Plus, many of them had turned black, some even white, which was a bad sign. When they all matched the color of a Turbak's eyes, which were always white, she would be dead.

She was also getting much too close to the village.

Aghet looked down at her palm, scoring one nail down the center of the tattooed skin there, right down her fire mark.